There you have it - a clear unalloyed statement of support for gay couples as long, of course, that they are faithful and monogamous and don't misbehave like heterosexuals do from time to time.

It is expected that Washington state legislators will soon deliberate two bills, HB2516 & SB6239, which would make same sex marriage law in that state. "Our Episcopal Church, after a long discussion about this over the years is poised to do roughly the same this summer at our General Convention," noted the bishop.

VOL believes there are multiple reasons why the bishop and the passage of this proposed legislation is wrong.

Here are a few reasons:

1. It automatically legitimizes a sexual behavior that the church has never recognized in its 2,000-year history.

2. The leader of 1.3 billion Roman Catholics opposes it. Pope Benedict XVI recently told a gathering of diplomats that family is only "based on the marriage of a man and a woman" and then went on to say, [these are] "policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself."

3. Washington state's four Catholic bishops issued a strong appeal, two weeks ago, that the Legislature maintain the current definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, in testimony to the Washington states Senate, warned of "the grave challenge this legislation poses to the common good."

4. The vast majority of Evangelicals in America reject it exemplified in the writings of Dr. Albert Mohler president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary - the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention says the claim of moral autonomy and moral relativism are the culprits.

"Throughout most of human history, moral principles were considered to be objectively true and inviolate. The universe was understood to be ruled by a moral law established by a divine Lawgiver and Judge. That understanding has given way to the belief that most, if not all, moral principles are the products of social construction - we make them up as we go along." This, he says, has made Same-sex marriage and homosexuality itself possible and acceptable in society.

5. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse also of Olympia says that history will not be kind to those who redefine marriage."Previous generations of social experimenters have caused unimaginable misery for millions of people. Particular people advocated the policies that led to today's 50% divorce rate and 40% out of wedlock childbearing rate. None of these people has ever been held accountable."

She says the essential public purpose of marriage attaches mothers and fathers to their children, and to one another. Once you replace that essential public purpose with inessential, even frivolous private purposes, marriage will not be able to do its job. But children will still need secure attachments to their mothers and fathers, a need which will go unfulfilled.

"You are redefining parenthood, as a side effect of redefining marriage, without even considering what you are about to do. Until now, marriage makes legal parenthood track biological parenthood. The legal presumption of paternity means that children born to a married woman are presumed to be the children of her husband. With this legal rule, and the social practice of sexual exclusivity, marriage attaches children to their biological parents," she said.

"Same sex couples of course, do not procreate together. Marriage equality" requires a slippery move from presumption of paternity" to the gender neutral presumption of parentage."

This sleight of hand transforms parenthood. The same sex partner of a biological parent is never the other biological parent. Rather than attaching children to their biological parents, same sex marriage is the vehicle that separates children from a parent."

6. The vast majority of African Americans completely reject same sex marriage. They are deeply offended by the high-jacking of the moral authority of their civil rights movement. When slavery was abolished, all slaves became free men and women. When women obtained the right to vote, the discrimination ended with the very next election. But for children of same sex marriage, the situation will be different. When we come to our senses 30 years from now and realize that we have perpetrated a grotesque injustice, not a single child born fatherless or motherless within a same sex marriage will get his missing parent back. Only prevention will protect children's rights.

7. There are a large and growing number of people (I call them 'homoskeptics') who neither hate nor fear 'gay' people but simply believe that sex outside a lifelong exclusive heterosexual marriage is morally wrong and the fact that we have certain feelings of sexual attraction does not mean that we should therefore act on them.

8. Furthermore, there are a growing number of people including gays themselves who believe the following are myths and open to repudiation. These people are highly skeptical about the key presuppositions on which the gay rights movement has based its campaign, such as the beliefs that:

* Homosexuality is genetically determined * Homosexual orientation is always fixed
* Sexual orientation is a biological characteristic like race, sex or skin color
* Feelings of same sex attraction should be welcomed and acted upon
* Offering help to those who wish to resist or eradicate these feelings is always wrong

9. Comparing the Lifestyles of homosexual couples to married couples the evidence indicates that "committed" homosexual relationships are radically different from married couples in several key respects:
* relationship duration
* monogamy vs. promiscuity
* relationship commitment
* number of children being raised
* health risks
* rates of intimate partner violence

10. Gay activists often point to high divorce rates and claim that married couples fare little better than homosexuals with regard to the duration of their relationships. The research, however, indicates that male homosexual relationships last only a fraction of the length of most marriages.

Married Couples

A 2001 National Center for Health Statistics study on marriage and divorce statistics reported that 66 percent of first marriages last ten years or longer, with fifty percent lasting twenty years or longer. [2]

Male Homosexual Relationships

The 2003-2004 Gay/Lesbian Consumer Online Census surveyed the lifestyles of 7,862 homosexuals. Of those involved in a "current relationship," only 15 percent describe their current relationship as having lasted twelve years or longer, with five percent lasting more than twenty years. While this "snapshot in time" is not an absolute predictor of the length of homosexual relationships, it does indicate that few homosexual relationships achieve the longevity common in marriages.

* In The Sexual Organization of the City, University of Chicago sociologist Edward Laumann argues that "typical gay city inhabitants spend most of their adult lives in 'transactional' relationships, or short-term commitments of less than six months."

* A study of homosexual men in the Netherlands published in the journal AIDS found that the "duration of steady partnerships" was 1.5 years.

* In his study of male homosexuality in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, Pollak found that "few homosexual relationships last longer than two years, with many men reporting hundreds of lifetime partners."

* In Male and Female Homosexuality, Saghir and Robins found that the average male homosexual live-in relationship lasts between two and three years.

"Commitment" in Male Homosexual Couples

Even in those homosexual relationships in which the partners consider themselves to be in a committed relationship, the meaning of "committed" or "monogamous" typically means something radically different than in heterosexual marriage.

* A Canadian study of homosexual men who had been in committed relationships lasting longer than one year found that only 25 percent of those interviewed reported being monogamous." According to study author Barry Adam, "Gay culture allows men to explore different...forms of relationships besides the monogamy coveted by heterosexuals."

* The Handbook of Family Diversity reported a study in which "many self-described 'monogamous' couples reported an average of three to five partners in the past year. Blasband and Peplau (1985) observed a similar pattern."

MONOGAMY VS. PROMISCUITY: Sexual Partners Outside of the relationship

Lest anyone suffer the illusion that any equivalency between the sexual practices of homosexual relationships and traditional marriage exists, the statistics regarding sexual fidelity within marriage are revealing:

Married couples

* A nationally representative survey of 884 men and 1,288 women published in the Journal of Sex Research found that 77 percent of married men and 88 percent of married women had remained faithful to their marriage vows

* A 1997 national survey appearing in The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States found that 75 percent of husbands and 85 percent of wives never had sexual relations outside of marriage.

Male Homosexuals

Research indicates that the average male homosexual has hundreds of sex partners in his lifetime:

* The Dutch study of partnered homosexuals, which was published in the journal AIDS, found that men with a steady partner had an average of eight sexual partners per year.

* Bell and Weinberg, in their classic study of male and female homosexuality, found that 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with 500 or more partners, with 28 percent having one thousand or more sex partners.

* In their study of the sexual profiles of 2,583 older homosexuals published in the Journal of Sex Research, Paul Van de Ven et al. found that "the modal range for number of sexual partners ever [of homosexuals] was 101-500." In addition, 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent had between 501 and 1,000 partners. A further 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent reported having had more than one thousand lifetime sexual partners.

* A survey conducted by the homosexual magazine Genre found that 24 percent of the respondents said they had had more than one hundred sexual partners in their lifetime. The magazine noted that several respondents suggested including a category of those who had more than one thousand sexual partners. [15]

Level of Commitment in Homosexual Relationships

If homosexuals and lesbians truly desired the same kind of commitment signified by marriage, then one would expect them to take advantage of the opportunity to enter into civil unions or registered partnerships, which grant them legal recognition as well as the legal rights of marriage. However, surprisingly few homosexuals and lesbians choose to enter into such legally recognized unions where such arrangements are available, indicating that such couples do not share the same view of commitment as typified by married couples.

The Episcopal bishop in Western Washington, who is in sharp disagreement with Scripture, history, tradition and faith, is delusional about sociology, science and medicine as well. By siding with activist homosexuals and lesbians, he displays a faux compassion that sides with error and falsity.

On a grander scale, The Episcopal Church's wrestling with the issue of "inclusion" and "diversity" has torn the fabric of the Anglican Communion, a tear that is no imminent danger of being repaired.

Bishop Rickel predicts marriage equality with be approved at the church's upcoming General Convention. He is probably right, but it will be another nail in the coffin of the Anglican Communion that started with Gene Robinson's consecration in 2003 as the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire.

His views have torn up parishes in TEC with hundreds withdrawing resulting in litigation costs running into the tens of millions have withdrawn from the Episcopal Church -- often generating litigation over church property with whole dioceses like Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, Quincy and San Joaquin proclaiming themselves Anglicans and severing ties with the parent church. An Ordinariate has been set up by the Pope to rescue Anglo-Catholics with hundreds of evangelicals in various stages of dispossession from TEC.

The bishop is in the wrong side of history, theology and Scripture.

If passed, Washington would be the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage.

END